A Prediction

A Prediction

If you can't write music,

Poetry or books

Already, then you

Really never wished to.

You go to school to learn

How to write a song,

When the song you want to write

Was born somewhere inside you.

A vestige of your genius

Comes early in your youth,

And burgeons as you grow,

But never changes.

Talk about maturity.

It's only growing older,

Slowly giving up

And being sad.

But if at 67

Another blossoming

Of your gift occurs,

The Muse is breathing.

10-8-13

After Reading A Few Of My Poems

Either I'm deluded

In a poetaster's dream,

Or else these songs are excellent,

Exactly as they seem.

Every captain loves his ship

And every child a kitten,

And every lover loves his love

The moment he is smitten.

The poems are not beautiful,

But smooth like cream, and thinky,

Nothing to be savored twice,

Occasionally kinky.

10-9-13

 

Kitty

I want to love you, Kitty.

You're are gentle, sad and needy.

You cry for love.

I give you very little.

Can each of us distinguish

Between pleasure and affection?
Is there any difference?
Is one superior?
The planet has no values.

Men eradicate them all.

And Kitty, in your normalcy,

You anger me with love.

There is no good but bad, and good

Is beauty, warmth and charm.

The ugly, sick and old are damned.

Even good men die.

10-9-13

Truth

In the hell of truth

Where it is searing to express it!

God is love

Like mold beneath the sink.

Insanity and madness

Never were a sanctuary.

No refuge for the hopeless,

Neither madness, truth or love.

Senility! The last disease of all.

10-9-13

Overview

Does everybody tell the truth?

Do you expect them to?

A typical American,

My grammar is for fools.

Perhaps my rhymes are accurate

And my rhythms true.

The beauty of Millay and Keats

Obviate a substance.

I couldn't write for melodies.

The syllables don't fit.

Larry Hart was perfect, and his

Rhymes were made for time.

10-9-13

The Need Of Poetry

The Need Of Poetry

A poem is no need,

It comes from need.

When your needs are met,

The stream is dry,

The tap is off,

And poesy is finished.

The Muse departs

And only rags remain,

Fragments of a genius satisfied,

Glutted on the nectar

And the vinegar of life.

10-7-13

“The poor will always be with us.”

• Tim Rice

Those who cannot,

Those who will not

Labor for their supper

Take so little taxes

That the country has enough

To start the latest war on its agenda.

Republicans don't like it

And would close the doors to Welfare,

So those who will not work

Will die instead.

And the sick

Are left upon the ice.

10-7-13

The Wound

He hit him with an open hand

As though to claw his eye out.

He didn't.

But they're going to mess him up,

And if he can, he won't be seen

In town for many years.

Cops are law. And this is justice.

Jesus Christ is mercy.

Understanding?
What if he'd been blinded?
He wasn't yet.

Perhaps he'll try again,

More successful with somebody else.

Somewhere at the origin

Of him there was a seed,

An innocent and pristine seed.

The tree grew bent and twisted.

Psychiatrists are useless,

And get paid the country's debt.

Cops are mean and do not give a damn.

This is life. North side life.

Mercutio lay dying.

All the streets were there when Shakespeare lived.

10-7-13

An Observation

Tenacity will often make a friend,

Occasionally and frequently,

But never every time.

It can become a cauldron

Wherein boils a brew of hate.

Quaff it and tomorrow will not come.

10-7-13

Changes

I feel many changes

In my guts and in my head.

My parents died at 70.

In three years I'll be dead.

My verses once rhapsodic

Lie buried in the hold.

Cotton mush came after.

But now I'm writing gold.

Quick and deep – no music -

Though music was Keats' charm -

And liquid gems from Edna

That glitter with alarm -

I always loved my poems

Secretly inside.

I tripped into the ocean,

And there the passion died.

I never liked my poems -

Abysmal, dismal, grey.

This former mist is lifting,

And drifting, blown away.

10-6-13

 

Subjects For A Poem

I'm write upon the ocean

Til it's visually dry

In poesy's extension of

The vacancy of sky.

Enveloping the moon that floats,

A thick and ebon cloud.

I'm cursed by weekend drunkards,

Table-pounding, laughing, loud.

Will poets rhapsodize the clouds

Until eternity

Ends? Has earth another sphere?

The meeting of close friends.

10-6-13

 

The New Age

Rancid water is washing away

Beautiful music and yesterday,

As factories pollute the bay.

They call them artists and let them sing.

Rotting time has wrought the thing

That made them. And violence is king.

10-6-13

Poems

How I Wanted To Write

Litter the grass with leaves.

The moonlight hits the sea.

A shard of restless moonlight cleaves

The heart of poetry.

Cry when your lover returns

And hope he doesn't sneer.

When a knowing lover spurns,

The darkling love stays near.

When the mountain falls

The canyon opens wide.

When a sparrow calls

The ocean will divide.

10-5-13

 

The Man

The harlequin's tattoos!

I guess he goes to war.

An isolated man

Just outside the store

Was digging in the garbage.

His trousers were a shred.

He hadn't shaved for several weeks.

His beard and hair were red.

10-5-13

Saturday Night

Again I am at Denny's.

The drunks have not come in.

The waitresses and waiters

Are preparing for the din

Of loud and raucous laughter

To sweep like a monsoon

In the place, and pound the tables,

Drunker than than the moon.

The screaming and the shouts,

Feral like the sea,

Breach the door at 2

And dissipate at 3.

10-5-13

 

Freedom

Here is a man who is totally free,

A liberty equal to fish in the sea.

If he had money, who knows where he'd be?

A paradise of autonomy!

I am constricted and sit in a chair,

No where to go, and don't go anywhere.

Living in poetry where I am free

In deterioration, I'm freer than he.

The verses are raveled. The rhythm is sound.

Where is the soul of the poesy-bound?

Did I have talent when I was a youth?

Some say I did. Were they telling the truth?

10-5-13

The Good Country

The Non-Poem

I slough off hugs, get out of love

And fall through all affection,

But never felt I was a lonely man.

The water from the rain is dripping

Slowly down my temples.

Baptism isn't only for the young.

What's it mean? This poem here.

Millay and Keats are nothing,

Though both of them more beautiful

Than deep substantial stuff.

Two final lines are finishing

This stanza of a poem.

10-4-13

 

Unfinished Poem

He ranted about hurricanes,

Tsunamis. With a yell,

God hollered, “Mind your business!”

As he threw him into hell.

Rather like an idiot

Forbearing to react,

He wondered, “Is this honesty

Or buttermilk and tact?”

10-3-13

The Good Country

The brainless ones in herds that hurtle

Daily through red lights -

While the ones whose lights are green

Just sit and passively allow it -

They do not honk their horns

Or drive their cars into the bastards,

Charging their insurance,

Putting them in hospitals.

America is very tolerant.

10-4-13

Sick

My father called that therapist

In Oakland “Jacqui Sh-t”.

My mother called the cripple

That you married “Michael Crooked”.

But nobody molested them.

They're dead. They died in peace.

I worshiped Jacqui Schiff

And barely tolerated John.

Yet I was knocked completely off

The ledge. And then was beaten.

So keep your damned religion

And Transactional Analysis,

You very skinny, very witty

Retread alcoholic!

10-4-13

Jill, A New Poem

Jill, A New Poem

Willful, stubborn and defiant,

Beautiful, a spitfire -

We have written many months -

Today she sent a picture -

Not a recent one, but one

When she was just a girl -

How long ago? 42

Years. She was a beauty -

As she is at 60.

An enigma – that I felt

An understanding youth in every

Syllable she wrote.

Now the photo – which I framed -

Cements and underscores

The certainty of her and my impression.

She went to Europe, told the Pope

That Jesus is a fiction.

She was there with Shakespeare when he

Wrote her favorite play -

7-25-13

 

The Cat

One needn't be mean to be hated.

Merely to love, seek attention or talk

Fosters antipathy deep in a heart.

It cannot be helped.

Nature made a mistake.

What is the purpose?

The universe fumbled.

Mothers devour their children.

10-3-13

 

A False Adage

The good die young,

The wicked never.

And honest men die poor.

Be assertive

Or prepare to grovel.

American naivete

Collapsed in 1960.

No one trusts.

The trusted once

Were called professionals -

Doctors, cops, psychologists.

And god has been dethroned

By communication and free speech.

And in the 20s Proust declared

That none believes in heaven.

10-2-13

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

Was very prolific,

And everyone loved her.

No blood and no puke.

English, her actors

Were warm and commanded

A depth and an interest.

British, you know.

Deceptively simple

Untangled and looked at,

She always surprised me,

And always alive.

10-2-13

 

Impressions In Denny's

I trusted you. And did you

Even for a moment

Believe what you were saying?
The enigma of the mind.

I lay and counted stars

Until the sun had risen,

Then faded into slumber

Til dusk had come again.

So many different people

And none of them is homeless,

Dressing as it suits them,

And sleeping where they like.

10-2-13

 

Doing Good

All that I'm supposed to do -

Look after what is mine,

Don't step on a policeman's shoes

And scuff his spit shine.

I'm not my brother's keeper.

If I have a heart of gold

And want to be intrusive,

Or if I'm cold,

It's the way that nature made me,

Or my mother in her prime.

I've done some small but good deeds

In my time.

Rebecca is an angel,

George almost a saint.

I use the subjunctive,

And don't say “ain't”.

10-2-13

Cops

Identicals

The loneliest man in the universe

Stands on Olympus and wishes them well,

Sees that the earth is a tenant of hell,

Chipping its rent from the shards of a shell,

Found on the beach in the wake of a swell.

The loneliest man in the universe

Bathes in the water splashed up from a well,

Drawn from the bottommost oceans of hell.

Life is a carney, a pea and a shell.

Bodies that perish in rivers swell.

10-1-13

My View

Anything but physical,

Fisticuffs, a kick,

Is painless and is easily

Forgotten very quick,

Unless you will remember it.

For what? An effigy

To hang among your trophies

Or inform your poesy?

To remember is pretending.

To forget is like stream

That passes over pebbles

And's forgotten like a dream.

I will never leave you.

It could not happen now.

We're changing. This the laurel

Hanging on a Muse's brow.

10-2-13

 

Cops

The terror of policemen -

Hoppy told me they're my friends

When I was 6 or 7,

Which is where the rainbows ends.

They'll hit you and they'll beat you

If you glance at them or look

In ways they disapprove of.

But by the Book. Oh, by the Book.

They congregate in Denny's

Ever morning about 3,

And everybody fawns and loves

And cuddles them but me.

I think there's something Freudian,

A little sick in this.

The coppers bask serenely

In the transference, the kiss.

All the little sycophants

Craving a rebirth

Cozy up to cops. It's just like

Meeting god on earth.

10-2-13

 

Metaphor Completed

This morning I woke happy

And groggy, felt my way

To Denny's for some coffee,

But I don't believe I'll stay.

Two poems came out quickly,

And I like them, which is rare.

Age is overcoming me,

But still there's something there.

My verses lack the quickness

Of the young, the sudden edge.

But listen to me, Burmeister,

I'm standing on the ledge.

Burmeister! Who said when in my

Youth I wrote a sonnet,

I'm hanging from a ledge and hope to

Hoist myself upon it.

2-10-13

Law Of The Street

Law Of The Street

A cycle in the center lane, you see,

Slowed abruptly, and an SUV

Struck it. Buddies of the fallen Man

Pulled the luckless driver from his van

And beat him. This according to the news.

Like believers sitting in the pews,

When motorcycle Men get mad, they spanky.

Really makes you proud to be a Yankee.

10-1-13

 

TA

Did anybody realize,
Permit me if I sing,

Transactional Analysis

Didn't mean a thing?

This cute and Christian panacea

For the mind's afflictions

Was totally a tangle

And a mess of contradictions.

Graphing on a grid the slightest

Things you say and do,

One leader of this holocaust

Was actually a Jew.

10-1-13

 

Wounded Ego

Lost in California

Where the Reagan lovers live,

Writing simple poesies

With all I have to give,

Certain as I am despite

What children see as art,

Carried like the sewage

Through the city in a cart,

If I got a showing someone,

Anyone would hear

There's magic in my poesy,

And as much sincere.

And if it caught – it won't! It seems

I've vilified a nation.

Some phrases more innocuous

Might cause a conflagration.

10-1-13

Enigma

If I stand alone, it is

As though I have no reasons,

Invisible, an effigy

Of rags in someone's vineyard.

And the crows descend. The sparrows

Perch upon my shoulders.

The grapes are plump and purple,

And the sun is going down.

I may fall into a furrow,

Tractors roll across me,

Break the sticks and tear the cloth.

I shall not feel a thing.

9-30-13

Two Books

In several days I'll publish -

Self-publish, no one wants me -

A book apiece for my two friends -

Each a dream I wake to.

Shakespeare didn't grovel for

The fortunes of the masses.

Shakespeare didn't have to.

The dice were tossed to please him.

And if I die before the books

Are ready to be purchased -

Anyway that's speculation.

No one's going to die.

No one's going to die. Not ever.

Syria and Egypt,

The Lord's Resistance Army,

Like Republicans, are myths.

9-30-13

 

Jill

Verses are my immortality,

And she the seraph guiding me to heaven.

Desist to write, and I would die at once.

But she beside me on a cloud would live.

All the stars are commas in a poem.

The midnight darkness, like a catacomb,

And she the moon illuminating lines

Of poesy that she could better write.

I want to write a poem about Jill,

Not an abstract fancy, but a dream,

Substantial. The reality of sleep

Keeps her image in a photograph.

9-30-13